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We’re Even, Senator McCain
Photo credit: Krista Kennell / Shutterstock.com
First off, I generally agree with Senator John McCain on foreign policy, even the aspects thereof that have fallen out of favor. That said, I’ve been thinking a lot about how much respect and restraint is due John McCain in his dying days and in the days immediately following his death. Here’s what I’ve concluded: not much. This post is not about denigrating him. It’s about declaring a debt paid. It’s about the Right’s freedom from any further obligation to a senator who has been justly compensated over a lifetime. Please tell me if we can stipulate the following assertions:
- John McCain leveraged his heroism and sacrifice into decades of fame, power, adulation, and fortune.
- John McCain, for decades, has made a regular practice of going out of his way to smite his enemies, primarily in his own party (i.e., people who Ricochetti generally agree with, respect, and/or like).
- McCain has continued that regular practice in his dying days, even going so far as to settle scores with his enemies in his own party. We get it, sir, you don’t like us very much. Point taken.
- McCain generally held his fire against then-Senator Barack Obama in the 2008 general election campaign, even going so far as to denounce Republicans who ran ads about Obama’s extreme anti-American pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
- McCain voted against the Bush tax cut; co-sponsored the unconstitutional campaign finance reform bill; supported immigration amnesty; and killed Republicans’ last chance at Obamacare repeal.
To the extent that we can stipulate these assertions as facts, I hereby free the Right from the obligation to praise John McCain. I further free the Right from their vow of silence over McCain’s history of abusing anyone and everyone on the Right who disagrees with him. John McCain has been amply compensated for his honorable military service during the Vietnam War. The Right has paid its debt to him. We’re even.
Published in General
Not if they’re broken the way I break them.
Wow. Bloodthirsty is right. He is not my favorite politician and I think his probably signature legislation, McCain-Feingold, is a particularly ill-considered piece of work.
But: 1) What price would you ask for 5 years of being tortured in an enemy dungeon?; and 2) Doesn’t common courtesy require us to hold our fire when it’s directed toward the dead or dying?
Two nuggets of wisdom come to mind: a) If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all; and b) Don’t speak ill of the dead.
The “debt” we owe to John McCain is nothing like the arguments for slavery reparations. Slavery reparations today would be payments from people who never owned slaves to people who were never enslaved. In short, nothing but a money grab.
John McCain, himself, endured years of misery and suffering as part of the defense of the country you live in against the horror of communist totalitarianism. Each of us directly benefits from the defeat of that existential threat to our freedoms, our prosperity, and our comforts and so each of us owes something of a debt to those who suffered to bring that defeat about.
He’s not immune from criticism, but this isn’t the time for it.
But we have socialists running for president (and coming awfully close to making it to the general!)
It is a byproduct of ’50s national pride to claim anyone who doesn’t like Apple Pie must be a communist, but it has become exceedingly clear to me that we have not been freed by this existential threat and that McCain has been unhelpful in keeping it at bay, if not outright enabling it.
How about if we’ve been doing it all along?
Besides…
Anyone read the excerpt from his memoir in the Saturday WSJ? He seems to believe he was passed the Steele dossier because his long opposition to Putin would cause the people he shared it with to take it seriously. No word on whether his animosity to Trump may have played a role.
I worked in an office where the senior manager had also spent time in the “Hanoi Hilton.” Other than flying the POW/MIA flag in front of the office, I don’t recall him or anyone else mentioning his ordeal except in passing. I had a lot of respect for the guy, mainly because he seemed like the kind of person you’d respect whether or not you’d known his past. I’m not sure I’d say the same of McCain just based on his reputation and his tendency to spit in the eyes of his natural supporters for personal spite.
That’s why the pedantic in me wants to point out the saying is a stopped clock is right twice a day. If the clock is broken because it runs fast or slow, it will be a while between times when it syncs with a correct clock, or in your case–never.
Well, his ACU rating (lifetime 80.91% places him 38th among serving US Republican senators (only 14 have a worse rating than McCain). Of course, he’s been there for thirty-five years (term limits, anyone?), so he’s had a while to accumulate it. In fact, there are only five senators who’ve served longer than McCain (they have between a 77% and 87% lifetime rating.)
This year, McCain is 50th out of 52 Republican senators with his ACU rating of 57%. Only Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins have a lower rating than McCain.
Even among the sixteen Republican senators who’ve served more than 20 years in the Senate (term limits, anyone?), John McCain’s 80.91% ACU rating places him only in fifth place. Eleven of the 20-plus-year senators have a higher (better) lifetime rating than he does.
So, really, in the context of his peers, color me unimpressed.
I think McCain’s presidential campaign was the point where a lot of people got tired of politicians who’d rather run a noble campaign and lose than run a dirty campaign and win. After that many people wanted someone who would fight, fight, fight dirty, and win. Hence the Trump campaign, in which the issue of campaign style came to a head when Trump said he preferred soldiers who capture the enemy over those who get captured by the enemy. Trump was repeating a refrain from Gen. George S. Patton, who said roughly the same thing.
McCain’s response has been to get spiteful. Spiteful when he voted against Obamacare reform. Spiteful when he publically insulted the President over who would attend his funeral.
I have a t-shirt from the McCain presidential campaign. It just says “McCain” on the front.
“‘McCain'” has faded,” my wife said on seeing the t-shirt. Yes, he has.
Telling the truth about Obama or asking real questions would not have been a dirty campaign. He ran a cowardly campaign. That may be a product of his lack of understanding of key issues. I was embarrassed that he was our candidate.
What’s the argument about a man being 80% my ally?
I have met a fair number of former VietNam POW’s. There were great guys to be around, to a man. I honor those guys for what they endured with such grace.
But John McCain has chosen to act like an (insert obscenity here: I never tripped the site software before) Nothing he did in the service of his country decades ago gives him a pass now.
Everyone ends up being the turd in the punch bowl once in a while. But if it’s always happening to you, you’re just a turd. Senator McCain relishes his opposition to his own party above almost anything else. He has chosen to behave this way. The notion that he deserves a pass is offensive to everyone who chooses not to act this way.
I stipulate all the above and agree McCain has pretty well emptied his good will bank account. However…
The man has brain disease. This isn’t lung cancer or colon cancer. Brain disease has a way of either overcoming one’s personality flaws or, ahem, enhancing them. Rather than forgiving his recent outrages (down-voting Obamacare repeal, dissing Palin, etc.), I’d like to turn the responsibility for the further damage done to the man’s legacy on his doctors and his family. There may be good strategic reasons for him not to retire yet (Tom’s comment), but the people who care for the man should be protecting his legacy in a way he seems incapable of. Memoirs and documentaries at this point are incredibly irresponsible and exploitative.
Get out the hook and get this man off the stage. Let him die in peace, surrounded by his loved ones. Or, in other words, someone should tell him to, “Sit down, John!” (from the musical 1776 in reference to another obnoxious and disliked John).
There is, indeed, an argument to that effect. But, alas, it’s not the one I’m making here.
Stipulated.
Again, my point is not that McCain is some great conservative; he’s not, and I’ve never claimed otherwise.
Rather, I’m pushing back against the idea that McCain’s political career has been an unmitigated disaster; in terms of his votes, he’s been pretty good. 81% ain’t much to brag about, but it’s more than acceptable.
(Again, I’m making no excuses for McCain-Feingold, which was awful.)
It has been many years since I’ve put any stock in the ACU ratings. Back in the 60s it seemed a useful index.
How about a compromise. On the day of his death and on the day of his funeral/memorial service, we’ll hold our tongues while the hate media exploit his death for partisan, political gain. On the remaining days he’s fair game.
BTW, there is one topic on which I tend to defer to Sen. McCain: The use of torture on enemy combatants and such.
As do most people. Yet other VietNam POW’s who were tortured disagree with John McCain on the effectiveness of torture, and whether or not the methods used by the CIA after 9/11 constitute torture. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/mccains-fellow-pows-support-waterboarding/2011/05/16/AF0f374G_blog.html?utm_term=.b0b71c796639
Should his opinions carry weight? Of course. But it doesn’t give him absolute authority on the subject. This isn’t a straw man argument – I’m not saying that’s your position but many others see it that way.
Genius. I wish I had thought of this first. (I mean: I did think about it, right? But, just didn’t type it up fast enough.)
His ghostwriting & media staff either needs fewer or a lot more shots of rye.
I remember the ones that said: “McCaint”
I kept my mouth shut; held my nose; and voted for him in 2008. I did my part. We’re even.
Post office naming bills don’t count.
Senator McCain: When the time comes, RIP. Rest easy.
That’s all I have to say about that.
Have you by any chance read The Gulag Archipelago? Or anything else about the Soviet system? Equating Bernie Sanders or Barack Obama, or any other irritating American leftist politician to the horrors of the communist systems that threatened us in the last century, and that still exist in places like Cuba and North Korea, is obscene and evinces a disturbing lacking in sense or perspective.
One thing about the left is true — as long as they aren’t in control they can sound reasonable but let that change and then you have the inner cities all completely run by Democrats. Major violence follows leftists and their policies if they aren’t kept in check. Look at the universities — violence, threats of violence, extreme bias against the political diversity. Letting things fester for too long also can cause violence.
There’s a reason I said I tend to defer rather than saying that I defer to him.
If anyone equates American leftists to the Soviet system, it would be a kindness to let us know about it.
On the other hand, comparisons of the Soviet system to their policies are very much in order.
Also, keep in mind that prior to 1917 the Bolsheviks hadn’t installed the GULAG or killed millions of people, either. Yet it’s not out of place to compare the pre-revolution Bolsheviks and their goals to what became of them later.
And BTW, I have read the Gulag Archipelago, and many, many other books about the Soviet system. I have also read a lot of American history.